Good post by Alicia Arenas over at Sanera about the supposed coming Social Media Revolution which is a handy read. I must confess that I clicked on it ready to dismiss it as being more social media wankspeak but there’s a few decent points in it, some of which is actually relevant to those in Scotland who work in digital PR.

Alicia writes about an event that happened off-centre at SXSWi which featured Tim Hayden, Chris Brogan, Jason Falls and Sam Decker. Read the post, it’s interesting stuff but I can’t believe it’s taken this long to get to the obvious. What sort of chancers have been running the asylum and paying the cheques in Social Media America until now? (And well done to Chris Brogan for sticking his head up before all the ‘I think that too’ types kick in…)

Anyway, according to the post there seems to be a sense out there of ‘ohh, there’s nothing new in social media just now’ which is partly true but also partly nonsense.

On the one hand, yes, there does seem to be less buzz about ‘this app is the new gamechanger TODAY, tomorrow will be something EVEN NEWER and you need to use it NOW’ which is good because businesses don’t work by adopting everything. Companies that just jump onto everything are wasting their time. Companies take quite a time to feel comfortable with new things – as much from a risk assessment POV as anything else.

The other reason there’s less buzz is – I would guess – there’s more doing. And when you are doing (in our case, normally for others) there’s less time to go and spout nonsense about what others are buzzing about. And doing beats talking any day of the week.

On the other hand, there are still people going ‘ohh shiny’ over a bunch of areas – location apps, ARG and so on. Sigh.

What I found quite hopeful about the article though is the fact that now, people seem to have accepted that you shouldn’t just be doing social media or digital engagement because it’s there. If you are a business or an individual, you should be using it for a reason, not because it’s there. That may sound quite simple, but it’s struck me as quite surprising over the last few years how many companies – particularly in the US – have just done social media because others are doing it. Scottish businesses have wanted a better ROI than “well, Zappos are doing it…”

I’ve been quite stunned by how much some companies just throw at digital engagement without a clear strategy or reason for doing so, so it’s quite gratifying to see companies waking up to reality.

To repeat: if you’re going to use social media or any form of digital engagement know what your goals are first and then work backwards. Goal then method.